tough love

So my mom's house has a flooded basement.

record or not, this is a 10-year storm, in my eyes. I certainly remember worse.

So I met up with a bunch of old friends today, most notably the Notorious BOB. So, now, it's over, it's been several hours, and I am, strictly speaking, drunk off my ass. God almighty, it's like i never quit fishing. So much fun.

last job...

yours truly, 6 months and 20 pounds ago.



Always happens. The last job gets screwed up. 30 minutes from topping off a modestly sized load of oil, the refiner calls and says they accidentally injected a slug of oil slurry into my cargo, and I have to pump it all back.

OK, so's I swing the valves that allows me ter switch-out, like, from load ter discharge, fires up me' prime movers, and start pushing oil at 100PSI back to the shore tanks. I pump cargo 'like a mad bastid' as we says at home.

And then I wait. And wait. Hopefully not too much longer, as there's a thirsty ship waiting, and my relief will be here tonight after that, so's I can go home and maybe say good morning to the Mrs. tomorrow.
The last job's always a bitch.

times are tough

So, one of my acquaintances slash sort-of-friends from back in the college days works as a legbreaker in South Boston for the Irish mob. I guess you could call him a bill collector if you are feeling squeamish. To be fair, he wasn't a professional punisher when we first became friends, and it's not something that we talk about, really. We mostly talked about Irish history (he was a serious history buff) and bemoaned the slow pace of peace talks between Sinn Fein and the UK government, and how Margaret Thatcher needed to get out of office before there could be an end to violence (which turned out to be 100% correct!). Anyhow, it was more interesting than your usual bar conversation, so we ended up being drinking buddies for a while.
Anyhow, those days are long gone, but when we do talk now, a couple of times a year at most, it's just to make plans to meet for a drink and lament what needs lamenting.
So when I called last night to make plans to meet up for a pint and watch a soccer game on TV, we chitchatted, and he tells me that this economy 'is killing him.'
Apparently, the 'independent loan industry' is way down this quarter. People are reigning in spending, even illegal spending, apparently. Apparently, from what I gather, the only business out there for loan sharks is in the construction trades- keeping businesses afloat while waiting for customers to pay their bills.

So, maybe Chairman Obama is telling people to celebrate this week because unemployment rates didn't go up, but from the man on the street's perspective, times are still tough.

Oh, and my friend of sorts also tells me that it's no longer quite so easy to obtain an illegal loan, too. Even the loan sharks are denying credit these days. Small businesspeople, sure, but the unemployed get nothing. Apparently it's not worth working up a sweat by beating on someone if there's just no money in it.

What a world. Sometimes I feel like such an innocent. I can't even break the speed limit without getting guilt.

feeling kind of small...

We're bunkering a VLCC. I feel wicked small. Very nice crew, which is always nice. The engineer on watch insisted that we get on a first name basis, and I was invited to the officer's mess for a drink. Sadly, I declined. GD Alaska, jumping in front of someone's damn tanker.
Anyhow, drinkless and everything, it's a beautiful sunny day. I'm sort of waiting for some kind of other shoe to drop, like the toilet seat catching fire or something. Don't know what's making me glum. Could be the channel fever. I've got it wicked bad. See? I'm even starting to write like we talk at home. Anyhow, 5 more days, then a wicked hahd ride home through NY, but I'll be home.

It'll be pissa.

no arguments!

I just got to use a wonderful quote from shitmydadsays.com

For those of you not in the know, Shit My Dad Says is a project started by ad adult male who lives with his cantankerous, elderly father. It has since taken wing, and is full of crude and often witty hyperbole-disguised-as-homespun wisdom. My favorite kind.

Anyhow, I posted a quote on another forum that is credited to Jay Leno, where he lists all the natural disasters and calamities of the past year, then asks the crowd if anyone else feels like it was a bad time to debate taking the words "under God" out of the American Pledge of Allegiance.

It was supposed to be funny, but of course, got hijacked by atheists. So be it.

Anyhow, rather than being an adult and fomenting debate, I shut that door with gusto, and put in a great little quote from shitmydadsays. "Yeah, Democracy is wonderful... until it fucks you."

And there's the rub. Our admittedly-close-to-mob-rule form of government is just fine, but when people don't agree with the law of the land, it's viewed as injustice, or tyranny, when personal views run contrary to the collective will of the citizenry. Whether it's atheists, gun-control nuts, abortion enthusiasts, whatever, I find that people with liberal agendas get all pissy when they're on the shit end of the stick, while conservatives seem to be more dignified, if self-righteous. I can't stand some of the laws that exist here in the US, but by God, (so to speak), when my view runs contrary, I don't cry conspiracy.

the troof

Bowsprite hit this one out of the park. For a moment there, last night, I was living someone else's vision, and that vision was darkly hilarious.

To wit:

If you're a mariner in the northeast, and you poke around on teh interwebz, you'll come across Bowsprite or someone's reference to Bowsprite. There are only so many artists who focus on the maritime world here in the industrialized portion of the northeast, and Bowsprite works in watercolors, which I have a particular fondness for.

Now, I've seen this drawing for a few days, but late, late last ni... well, early this morning, I guess, when we were casting off from alongside a rusting Russian reefer ship, the fuckers dumped my bowline in the drink.

For my friends at home (hi Ma! sorry about the f-bomb), when we mate up a bunker barge and a ship, the hawsers preferably run in a predictable pattern. On the bow, a bowline runs from the outboard side of the bunker barge to a point well forward on the ship. This prevents the barge from sliding aft AND keeps the bow snug against the hull of the ship. Same thing on the stern.

When the job is done, and it's time to move on, the deckhands on the ship cast off out hawsers one at a time, and, for the most part, throw the eye (the end of the hawser) onto the deck of the barge. This prevents the bargemen from having to drag a heavy wet, and often cold rope out of the water, and is the polite custom. The thing is, for the most part, people don't just drop your hawsers in the water, but, for some reason, many foreign ships take great pleasure in throwing off the bowline into the water. This is shitty for several reasons- one, it is often the last line connecting the barge to the ship, and therefore should be removed only with the captain of the tug's say-so. Second, a polite sailor will wait for the tug to push the barge under the chock on the ship, so the upwards-to-half-a-cable (anywhere up to 300 feet, in theory) of heavy-ass hawser can be taken up slowly on board without too much fuss, and then the eye can be thrown on deck, waves and wishes for a safe voyage passed, and life goes on.

OR, the deckhand rushes forward and flings the eye in the water, and there is now a couple of hundred feet of hawser to pull out of the water before it drifts under the barge. This results in scrambling and cursing and wet, numb hands and legs, and maybe I give someone the finger, and that's not nice at all.

Anyhow, Bowsprite has captured that dismay forever, and everyone is cracking up when they come aboard and I show it to them.